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There are a lot of people that make this comic possible. We built our story with many hours of great storytelling and brainstorming from our friends on Shattered Universe! I look forward to sharing our stories with you!

This comic is what some people in the gaming industry would call a “Replay” – it’s a creative adaptation of a role playing game that Kim, our contributors, and I, played through several years ago. We have faced the unique challenge of sorting through miles and miles of RP logs and posts to come up with the finished work that we’re presenting to you now. While some people might think that the story is written for us, it’s actually been quite a trip changing medium. Where a writer can describe a scene in detail, we have had to really cut our imaginations down into concise narrations, which our artist – Nicoy – translates into the beautiful images and the various panels that you see in our comic today. Nicoy has been a very special partner, and the work she has produced is magnificent. I cannot help but get excited for every update.

I wanted to take the time to really thank the members of Shattered-Universe.com again for their help and their support – without them, none of this would have been possible or even something that I would have ever thought about doing. Originally, I had wanted to be a published novel writer, but fate seems to have kicked me in another direction, as it often does.

For this, and many other things, I should especially thank Kim, who is much more experienced in this industry than I am. After a big upheaval where I changed jobs, states, and my whole style of living, I was able to become financially stable. Rather than spending the money on myself, my first instinct was to pay for her comic script’s debut, so that her dreams could be realized more fully. Alas, however, she suggested that I pay for one that we would both write ourselves, which has been a lot more work than I bargained for! But, without Kim, this would never have been possible at all, and she has been a pleasure to work with. Only she knows how much.

Still, money can’t replace work, so to a great extent this comic is one of the ways that I show how much I care about her and about the stories we have created over the last six or seven years. Though I often fail my deadlines and sometimes it’s very hard to get motivated enough to look at the script over and over again, and I’m sure by now she’s gotten very tired of my constant tweaks and opinion changing, I know that she and the entire community appreciates the effort that we’ve been putting into this.

So to all of you roleplayers out there, particularly the members of Shattered-Universe.com – don’t limit yourselves. Reach for the stars, and sometimes you’ll hit a cloud or two on your way down.

Kim and I actually had another reference for our artist for the ship in panel 5, but Nicoy does some really awesome concept work, and we ended up getting sold on her idea of a “birdship”.

When we were writing the roleplay that this replay is loosely based upon, we were very sold on the idea of “Science Fantasy” as opposed to “Science fiction”. Rather than having a setting where technology operated on hard, scientific rules, we were kind of sold on the idea that ‘technology, sufficiently advanced, can resemble magic.’ In our universe, while there are some elements of science fiction like starships, laser guns, and so on, they hold place sometimes with wondrous powers or events that originally stem from a peculiar planet – Jord, home of the Tatiya Hini, who resemble elves so closely that when they were discovered humanity simply named them so, and the name stuck.

Magic, therefore, does operate in this setting on some scientific principle, but that principle isn’t commonly known or utilized. Admittedly, we originally wanted armor because armor is cool, but the armor actually serves a purpose. Voss’s armor is made of marium, which is a material that does not conduct magic. So, although in these panels and the pages that follow Voss looks rather anachronistic, he is actually properly dressed for where he’s going!

Kim and I also spent a lot of time this weekend playing Dragon Age: Origins. >_> Make of that what you will.

I also wanted to mention something about the banners in the third panel; we actually forgot to provide her references for the emblemson the flags so she pulled them from the Shattered-Universe website. The flag on the left is for an organization called “S6”, and the one on the right is the Interstellar Alliance flag.

Hey, Mike here again. I just realized, since Kim scheduled all of these, she’s technically the author of these little comic blogs! But, you’ve got me again this week. ;p

Since I’ve spent some of the weekend putting my personal finances in order, I figured I’d mention that Kim & I are currently gunning for a booth at Kawaii Kon in April of next year! We’ve got a ways to go before that, but if we keep going at the page-a-week pace we have been setting, having something to sell will be very doable, and we’ll be set up with a few comics, a few journals (with art prints on the front), and whatever else we can come up with for the table. It’s going to be my first con ever. I’ve never actually gone to one, though Kim’s been to dozens, so I’m going to keep my ears perked and my tail bushy and see how it goes. Really looking forward to it.

I’ve also applied for classes in November, and have spent some of this weekend sorting out financial aid. I’m going for a BBA! Life takes strange turns sometimes, but we’re planning on turning Shattered Universe into a sort of franchise, like some of the Pathfinder, or D&D settings. A lot of my own inspiration for that comes from some of my own obsession with Forgotten Realms. For a pretty significant portion of my life, I’ve been playing City of Arabel, a Neverwinter Nights persistent server that’s currently transitioning into NWN: Enhanced Edition’s server formatting. Therese, one of our contracted artists, actually DMs there, which is how we met. It’s a small world!

Anyway, that’s where most of my lore-nuttery comes from. We hope to make Shattered Universe just about as rich as Forgotten Realms, or Pathfinder’s adventure setting, and it’s a really big inspiration to us. A person has to start somewhere.

Hey! So I missed my deadline for this blog post. I’ve got a terrible memory, despite having plugged this into Google calendar.

As a bit of forewarning (or maybe some news?) I’m going back to school! This November, I’ll be going for my first Bachelors of Science – Business Administration, with a focus in Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the comic is going to slow down to one page every two weeks from next week and forward; part of my monthly budget will be going to paying for college.

I’ve tried to go to college a couple times and didn’t do so well. First I went for English – then for Engineering – then I was pursuing a bachelors of arts, in Philosophy. I knew that I always wanted to write, and I had never expected that I would be getting a degree that would make me money. My heart wasn’t really in my studies, and that reflected in my grades. The difference this time is that I am genuinely interested in what I am studying – I would like to help the Shattered Universe community, filled with creative people just like Kim and I, turn their hobbies into meaningful endeavors like comics, books, manga, and other forms of multimedia.

We have (as you can see) already had some modest success in this particular quest, and I can only hope that we will continue to see a good path forwards, onward and upwards.

Now, as to these scenes in the comic – Nicoy has been excessively creative with the ship design in panel 2 and panel 3, and we were glad to take her suggestions about the separation between Malik and Sintija (the elfess in panels 3/4). Malik and Sintija is a story that Kim and I have been writing almost since we became partners, and it’s something that’s rather dear to both of us. We’re actually looking at finishing our book near the end of November, and the end is in sight. We’ve only got about five or six chapters left, and we typically hammer out whole chapters when we can get sat down to write together. I’ll admit that sometimes I lose steam, but she is always very encouraging. I am going to promote it shamelessly when we finish it.

As to the ship that is depicted in panel 5 – that’s the work of James Lambly, who is drawing his own comic which he hasn’t yet published to the web. Nicoy took his ship design and simply redrew it; the design is his. That’s the Asteria itself, and he did a marvelous job at it.

We have a joke about how Lukina’s hair is its own character but such is having long silky hair and sitting in a port! The cross wings are crazy! You only see it for a second but Lukina is wearing her Shouwei Uniform and then her Alliance Marine uniform. The alien she’s fighting is something original that Nicoy created for this page. It will be getting a more in depth write-up on our wiki later on.

I designed the Shouwei Uniform while our friend, J. Lambly designed the Interstellar Alliance Marine Uniform. We still haven’t written up the specs for Lukina’s rifle but it has been modernized for the setting of 1000 ish years in the future where normal kinetic rifle rounds would be too low tech for regular warfare.

Man, it totally drives me nuts how good Nicoy is with the scenery art. I really like the way she does trees for some reason.

Also in this page, more of Lukina’s wild hair. Kim mentioned this in the last page’s post, but man, her hair is everywhere.

This page we wanted to sort of lead into the next series of pages. You could say that the first seven pages is a sort of segment, and then there are another seven or eight pages after it that are a segment, and then that’s basically the first issue of Song of Hope, all done up and sitting pretty.

The website is also doing quite well for itself. College has been hectic. But if I’m a little buried in it, I know that Kim is up to her ears, and she still finds time to schedule these updates. Couldn’t ask for a better partner.